<a href="030">030</a>    [ 031 ]    <a href="032">032</a>at home, which downloaded and deleted my mail from the server every sixty seconds. They wouldn't get anything out of my mail -- it got cleared off the server and stored on my laptop at home. Back to the cell, but they cut loose my hands and they gave me a shower and a pair of orange prison pants to wear. They were too big for me and hung down low on my hips, like a Mexican gang-kid in the Mission. That's where the baggy-pants-down-your-ass look comes from you know that? From prison. I tell you what, it's less fun when it's not a fashion statement. They took away my jeans, and I spent another day in the cell. The walls were scratched cement over a steel grid. You could tell, because the steel was rusting in the salt air, and the grid shone through the green paint in red-orange. My parents were out that window, somewhere. They came for me again the next day. "We've been reading your mail for a day now. We changed the password so that your home computer couldn't fetch it." Well, of course they had. I would have done the same, now that I thought of it. "We have enough on you now to put you away for a very long time, Marcus. Your possession of these articles --" she gestured at all my little gizmos -- "and the data we recovered from your phone and memory sticks, as well as the subversive material we'd no doubt find if we raided your house and took your computer. It's enough to put you away until you're an old man. Do you understand that?" I didn't believe it for a second. There's no way a judge would say that all this stuff constituted any kind of real crime. It was free speech, it was technological tinkering. It wasn't a crime. But who said that these people would ever put me in front of a judge. "We know where you live, we know who your friends are. We know how you operate and how you think." It dawned on me then. They were about to let me go. The room seemed to brighten. I heard myself breathing, short little breaths. "We just want to know one thing: what was the delivery mechanism for the bombs on the bridge?" I stopped breathing. The room darkened again. "What?" "There were ten charges on the bridge, all along its length. They weren't in car-trunks. They'd been placed there. Who placed them there, and how did they get there?" "What?" I said it again. "This is your last chance, Marcus," she said. She looked sad. "You were doing so well until now. Tell us this and you can go home. You can get a lawyer and defend yourself in a court of law. There are doubtless extenuating circumstances that you can use to explain your actions. Just tell us this thing, and you're gone." "I don't know what you're talking about!" I was crying and I didn't even care. Sobbing, blubbering. "I have *no idea what you're talking about*!" She shook her head. "Marcus, please. Let us help you. By now you know that we always get what we're after." There was a gibbering
sound in the back of my mind. They were *insane*. I pulled myself together, working hard to stop the tears. "Listen, lady, this is nuts. You've been into my stuff, you've seen it all. I'm a seventeen year old high school student, not a terrorist! You can't seriously think --" "Marcus, haven't you figured out that we're serious yet?" She shook her head. "You get pretty good grades. I thought you'd be smarter than that." She made a flicking gesture and the guards picked me up by the armpits. Back in my cell, a hundred little speeches occurred to me. The French call this "esprit d'escalier" -- the spirit of the staircase, the snappy rebuttals that come to you after you leave the room and slink down the stairs. In my mind, I stood and delivered, telling her that I was a citizen who loved my freedom, which made me the patriot and made her the traitor. In my mind, I shamed her for turning my country into an armed camp. In my mind, I was eloquent and brilliant and reduced her to tears. But you know
what?
<a href="030">030</a>    [ 031 ]    <a href="032">032</a>